Get a car with a minimum of 30mpg on surface roads.
Get rid of the SUV, unless you have over 4 children, work on a farm, or work at speculative geology in Alaska for a living.
Buy a bike and do your errands on that if you’re just going to the store for a quart of milk etc..
Turn your airco thermostat up a degree, turn your heating thermostat down a degree. You won’t notice the difference and even a degree more/less will lower your bill.
If you own a home, look into getting your roof/attic insulated. The UK has had homeowners incentives and regulations for years, and most homes have seen considerable heating reductions (heating being more important than cooling in Britain), by laying 4 inches of insulation in roofs and attics.
Another thing homeowners can look into is solar powered water heating. Solar panels have had a technological surge in recent years, and are twice as effective as they used to be. In a state (CA) that gets over 250 days sunshine a year, it’s money for old rope. IIRC, the state even has incentives to help homeowners convert to solar heating.
If you’re willing to shell out some serious cash, you can even convert your house to run completly on solar power. The downside being that its intially expensive. The upside that, once converted, your house may very well put energy into the Natonal Grid, and your DWP bill will be a credit, rather than a debit.
Look into getting a Grey Water septic tank – you can irrigate your yard using shower water/dishwasher water, etc…you’ve already bought the water, so why not use it again?
Consider converting some of those 100’s of sq ft of water-intensive lawn into a vegetable garden. Nothing fancy, in fact you could even grow herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, potatoes etc.. in containers if you love your lawn too much to give it up. Not only almost free vegetables, but you’ve just saved the cost of transportation (average distance 1500 miles) for food that can be easily grown in your yard.
Don’t get me started on this 😉 Maybe its something to do with growing up in London, where every square foot is precious and gas has cost $5 a gallon for decades.
I know that the US was once a thrifty and frugal place, but it seems in recent decades the whole place has thrown that out the wndow and replaced it with The Culture of Bling.
